Looking for evidence

It is one of the great ironies of Hollywood that the forensic laboratory in the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is better equipped than most of its real-life counterparts. "I long ago gave up trying to feel bad for other crime labs," explains the show's technical consultant, Liz Devine. "We have a lot of good equipment, and I know there are crime labs that don't, but I can't help them. All I can do is represent accurately what can be done with the right tools."

Devine, who worked for the L.A. Sheriff's office for 15 years, is considered an expert in the field of criminalistics, the collection and examination of the physical evidence of a crime. Think DNA, cotton fibres, microscopes and cops with white coats. She now works full-time as a consultant to CSI, producer Jerry Bruckheimer's drama series about a team of forensic scientists working in the Criminalistics Bureau of the Las Vegas Police Department.

The story material is fairly run of the mill for the genre - abduction, rape and murder - but it is CSI's technique that sets it apart from its peers. And that is where Liz Devine comes in.

"We're showing people the cool stuff that goes on behind the scenes that nobody thought they were interested in," she says. "That's why this show is hot. Every time I told somebody what I did, they were always interested and I would have to explain this case and that case, how they did that and how they do that."

Devine works in a small office attached to the main studio building at Santa Clarita Studios in Valencia, California, about an hour's drive from Los Angeles. Her day is divided between vetting scripts, to ensure that the show's use of forensic technology is accurate or at least plausible, and spending time on location with the actors, coaching them in the physical disciplines of their character's work.");document.write("

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Her decision to leave the real field of forensics and work in the field of television forensics, Devine says, was to ensure the show was done properly. The money, she adds candidly, was fairly tempting as well. And maybe, just maybe, the opportunity to right a few wrongs as far as the traditional perception of cops goes.

"We make our criminalists heroes and we have beautiful women and gorgeous men doing this," she admits. "And yes, we interview suspects on the show, which we don't do in real life, but that just tells the story more quickly. Most crime labs are the red-headed step-children of law enforcement. We don't get money, we're in the background. If the case is solved you only see the detective and the district attorney, and that's how it's always been. I just figure [that] it's our turn."

Walking the truthful line when it comes to forensic techniques and technology is difficult, she concedes, especially when the show used a number of consultants with differing opinions early in its life.

"I understand there has to be a story told, and the story has to be told in a reasonable time frame," says Devine. "I understood that going in. What we represent, for the most part, are forensics that are used, and possible. We do cheat here and there, but there have been very few [cheats] that I have really had a problem with. We don't make up the actual forensics, but where we take a cheat is obviously [in] how long it takes to do something. The technical aspects of it are all accurate, so when we represent a particular type of technology or equipment or analysis, it is something that is being done."

But, she concedes, "I understand it is a show and we're trying to tell a story, and these are actors and these are props. But at the same time we are trying to portray them not just as criminalists, but good criminalists."

She doesn't win every battle, she says, but "we research everything that we put on and I put my notes on every script, so they know when they're making a cheat, and that's okay, as long as they know and they say 'We're okay with that'. They listen when I say, 'That would never happen, don't do it'."

Devine is passionate about her work. She is fiercely proud of the field of forensic science, and doesn't hold back when the conversation arrives at the O.J. Simpson case: won and lost, many believe, on the handling (or mishandling) of forensic evidence, depending on who you believe.

"We don't have any stake in who gets arrested," she says. "I can guarantee you nobody in that crime lab cared if O.J. [Simpson] did the murder or not. Their job was to find out who did it.

"The reason I left the department to [work] on the show full-time, is that I want to show that most of the time these cases are done right, and most of the time these people are working as hard as they can to figure out what the evidence is saying to them. They are the real heroes and we don't portray them as that often."

Devine doesn't hold her opinions back. The subject of other TV crime dramas is also a prickly one. "This is not grey, rainy New York, where everybody is a dope dealer. We're not trying to be NYPD Blue," she says, adding:

"Those shows have been, in my opinion, horribly lacking in representing forensics. Law and Order is pathetic.

"Someone says, 'Go get the firearms report', and they come back with a report. Nobody knows where the evidence comes from, they bark at the criminals at the scene and they go and get the results the next day. [The producers obviously] felt that people would be bored if you told them, well, actually, the [detectives] are comparing the bunting marks on the cartridge casings from the scene.

"People aren't bored by that. That's what they want. They don't want to just see talking heads in court, and interviews in an interrogation room, [which is] what every cop show and every lawyer show has always done."

The proof, you might say, is in the pudding. CSI and its new spin-off, CSI: Miami, have become two of the United States' most successful TV shows. "I feel I can hold my head high," Devine says. "My daughter says 'Mum, it's much more important to put bad guys in jail than make a TV show,' and she's right, it's true, but I've put enough bad guys in jail and I'm tired of that."

The new series of CSI screens on Tuesdays at 8.30pm on Nine. CSI: Miami will premiere on Nine later this year.